The Radio Planet

The Journey

Paths through the archive

A journey isn't a playlist. It's an edited sequence — episodes pulled from different series and placed in an order that argues something, with a note at every stop explaining why it's there.

1963
November 1963

72 Hours on the Air

The assassination weekend as radio and television carried it: the bulletin that broke the day, the long vigil, the shooting of the accused, and the funeral that closed it.

Inside the box
  • Four Days in November — KLIF-AM Dallas — as it happened, part 1
  • Four Days in November — KLIF-AM Dallas — as it happened, part 2
  • Four Days in November — KLIF-AM Dallas — as it happened, part 3
  • Four Days in November — Voice of America — the news goes worldwide
Items

5

Extent

3h 41m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1944
The War Years

Christmas Eve, 1944

One night, four transmitters. Home-front variety, forces mail, London under blackout and a war reported in the present tense.

Inside the box
  • Command Performance — Eddie Cantor
  • Mail Call — Groucho Marx, Betty Grable, Judy Garland
  • Winston Churchill: The BBC Broadcasts — Wu330424 Winstonchurchill 0003 The Locust Years
  • Words at War — Combined Operations - The Official Story of the British Commandos
Items

5

Extent

2h 40m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1938 – now
Fear, invented

The Night Radio Frightened America

How broadcasting learned to scare people, from the Martian hoax through the anthology thrillers to the modern folklore hour.

Inside the box
  • The War of the Worlds — The Mercury Theatre on the Air — Dracula
  • Lights Out — Lights Out 1935-xx-xx (xx) Strange Couple Stays Overnight
  • Suspense — Forecast The Lodger (audition)
  • Escape — Out Of This World (Audition)
Items

4

Extent

2h 25m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1944 – now
The live room

Where Comedy Learned Timing

The studio audience has never left. Trace the rhythm of the network comedy hour into the modern conversation show.

Inside the box
  • Fibber McGee and Molly — FMM 1931-06-01 (xx) Smackout
  • Abbott and Costello — Lion Hunting
  • Duffy's Tavern — duff.1940.04.11 Duffys Tavern
Items

3

Extent

1h 14m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1949 – now
The procedural

Detective Work, 1949 to Now

From the flat police realism of postwar radio to the modern investigative feed — same beat, different microphone.

Inside the box
  • Dragnet — Production 2 aka Homicide aka The Nickel Plated Gun
  • Pat Novak, For Hire — John St. John
  • Night Beat — Elevator Caper
Items

3

Extent

1h 28m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1969 – now
Curiosity path

The Universe, Explained

Start on the Moon in 1969, end somewhere much stranger. A path through the best explanatory hours on the network.

Inside the box
  • Apollo 11 — Onboard audio highlight 1
Items

1

Extent

5 min

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1930 – 1935
The first decade

Radio Before It Settled Down

Before the networks perfected the sitcom and the soap, radio was still improvising its own form. A path through the earliest surviving broadcasts.

Inside the box
  • Empire Builders (1930–1931) — Armistice Day Reunion
  • The Fire Chief — Ed Wynn (1932–1933) — The Prince Goes To School
  • Tarzan of the Apes (1932) — Tarzan's First Birthday
  • Chandu the Magician (1932–1934) — Transferred To Egypt
Items

6

Extent

2h 32m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1942 – 1945
The war, from the kitchen

The Home Front

Not the front line but the country behind it: ration points, war bonds, letters overseas and the comedy that kept running anyway.

Inside the box
  • The Bond Drive — NBC War Bond Parade Seventh Consecutive War Bond Drive
  • Treasury Star Parade — The Invaders
  • Fibber McGee and Molly — FMM 1935-12-16 (36) The Bridge Game
  • Mail Call — Groucho Marx, Irene Manning, Paulette Goddard
Items

5

Extent

2h 9m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1939 – 1945
London on the air

The BBC at War

The British service through the war years: the newsroom, the Prime Minister's voice, and the propaganda aimed back the other way.

Inside the box
  • London Calling: BBC News at War — BBC Viscount Halifax Our War Aims Now and After
  • Winston Churchill: The BBC Broadcasts — Wu391001 Winstonchurchill 0013 The First Month Of War
  • BBC Home Service — Huis Clos by Jean Paul Sartre
  • BBC European Services — Ici Londres Victoire Sovitique Stalingrad
Items

5

Extent

1h 33m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1938 – 1953
British radio abroad

The Empire of the BBC

The BBC's reach beyond London: home-grown detective serials, sketch comedy and the light entertainment format the Commonwealth stations borrowed wholesale.

Inside the box
  • Paul Temple — A Room Above the Street
  • ITMA: It's That Man Again — Signal at Midnight
  • Band Waggon — Signal at Midnight
  • Much Binding in the Marsh — Night Broadcast
Items

5

Extent

2h 15m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1946 – 1952
All India Radio

A New Country, On Air

The broadcasts around independence and partition, as All India Radio carried them — a young state finding its own frequency.

Inside the box
  • Voices of Independent India — The Last Train Out
  • Voices of Independent India — Signal at Midnight
  • Voices of Independent India — A Room Above the Street
Items

3

Extent

1h 54m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1943 – 1968
Canada's national service

The CBC After the War

Canadian radio's own repertory of drama, variety and detective work, built alongside — and distinct from — its American neighbour.

Inside the box
  • The Happy Gang — A Room Above the Street
  • CBC Stage — Sweeney Todd, Part One
  • Wayne and Shuster — A Shakespearean Baseball Game
  • CBC Mystery Theatre — 66-11-xx 01 The Tell-Tale Heart
Items

5

Extent

2h 21m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1930s – now
Sport on the air

Calling the Game

Play-by-play as its own broadcasting discipline, from the rink to the newsreel to the modern hour-long recap.

Inside the box
  • The Hockey Broadcast — The History of the Hockey Broadcast
  • Bill Stern's Sports Newsreel — Harry James — 1942
  • The Universal Newsreel: The Forties — Washington DC
Items

3

Extent

1h 8m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1932 – 1955
One comedian, one persona

The Jack Benny Vault

Benny built an entire career on being cheap, vain and thirty-nine — a running joke sustained across two decades. A path through its variations.

Inside the box
  • The Jack Benny Program — JB 1932-05-02 First show
  • The Jack Benny Program — JB 1934-04-27 New Hampshire Through a Keyhole
  • The Lucky Strike Program Starring Jack Benny at Christmas — Drugstore Frank Sinatra Frank Morgan
  • The Jell-O Show Starring Jack Benny at Christmas — An Old Fashioned Christmas
Items

4

Extent

1h 32m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1935 – 1959
One gag, one decade

Fibber McGee's Closet

A single sound effect — the overstuffed hall closet — held one of network radio's longest-running shows together. Four visits across the years.

Inside the box
  • Fibber McGee and Molly — FMM 1931-06-01 (xx) Smackout
  • Fibber McGee and Molly — FMM 1936-08-10 (70) Old Calvalryman McGee
  • The Johnson Wax Program With Fibber McGee and Molly at Christmas — Mailing Christmas Packages
  • The Great Gildersleeve — Gildy's Dream - Summerfield 1903
Items

4

Extent

1h 49m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1933 – 1949
How the procedural got flat

Before Dragnet

Dragnet's clipped, procedural style didn't appear from nothing. Four earlier detective shows show the style it was reacting against, and the one it borrowed from.

Inside the box
  • Calling All Cars — ep002 Burma White Case
  • Gang Busters — Gang Busters 1940-11-01 (210) The Case of Dwight Beard - Pt 2
  • This Is Your FBI — Espionage
  • Dragnet — Production 2 aka Homicide aka The Nickel Plated Gun
Items

5

Extent

2h 27m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1937 – 1951
One character, three productions

The Shadow, Across Decades

Lamont Cranston's alter ego ran across networks, countries and decades. Compare the American original with its Australian counterpart.

Inside the box
  • The Shadow — The Shadow 1937-09-26 (87) The Death House Rescue
  • RKO Orson Welles - The Shadow - radio recordings — The Shadow 37-09-26 Death House Rescue
  • The Shadow (Australian Production) — Shadow (Aus) #01 46-01-30 rec The Phantom Voice (orig US 38-02-06)
  • The Shadow at Christmas — The Man Who Murdered Time
Items

4

Extent

2h 20m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1939 – now
One detective, every era

Sherlock Holmes on Air

Holmes has never been off the air for long. From the American network version through the BBC's own detective serials to the modern audio adaptation.

Inside the box
  • Stories of Sherlock Holmes — Stories Of Sherlock Holmes - SA 80-09-11 (x) The Waldhausen
  • The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes — Sherlock Holmes 1939-11-06 (6) The Bruce Partington Plans
  • A SHERLOCK HOLMES CHRISTMAS CAROL, Radio Shows with Basil Rathbone & Orson Welles — The Final Problem, 32-05-19 (069)
Items

3

Extent

1h 22m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1943 – 1953
Hard-boiled radio

The Noir Microphone

The private-eye voiceover — world-weary, first-person, a little too clever — was a radio invention before it was a film cliché.

Inside the box
  • The Adventures of Sam Spade — Lux Radio Theater The Maltese Falcon
  • The Adventures of Philip Marlowe — Who Shot Waldo
  • Pat Novak, For Hire — John St. John
  • Richard Diamond, Private Detective — The Barton Case
Items

5

Extent

2h 46m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1941 – 1961
The frontier, dramatized

The Western Hour

From the Lone Ranger's masked simplicity to Gunsmoke's harder, more adult frontier — the western learned to grow up on the radio first.

Inside the box
  • The Lone Ranger — TheLoneRanger40 Willing To Fight
  • Hopalong Cassidy — Audition Program
  • Fort Laramie — Untitled Broadcast
  • Gunsmoke — 49-06-01
Items

6

Extent

2h 54m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1938 – 1955
Masked heroes for children

The Lone Ranger and Friends

The after-school adventure serial, aimed squarely at children and sponsored just as squarely by their parents' cereal money.

Inside the box
  • The Lone Ranger — TheLoneRanger38 Matt Badger The Hawk
  • Jack Armstrong: All American Boy — Rescue all pelican Crew
  • Tom Mix Ralston Straight Shooters — TM 1939-03-10 Jane's Father
  • The Air Adventures Of Jimmy Allen — aaja.1936 Ep 0417
Items

5

Extent

1h 42m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1950 – 1955
The genre's radio decade

Science Fiction Before Television

For a few years, the best-produced American science fiction was on the radio, not in print or on screen. A short, dense era, worth the whole path.

Inside the box
  • Dimension X — X 1950 04 08 01 OuterLimit
  • X Minus One — xminusone And The Moon Be Still And Bright
  • Space Patrol — How Buzz Cory Became Commander
  • Rocky Starr Lost in Space — RSLS 1955-02-22 Episodes No. 01
Items

5

Extent

1h 23m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1937 – 1962
After school, before dinner

What Children Listened To

The daily quarter-hour slot built specifically for young listeners — adventure, comic strips and moral instruction, sold with a cereal box top.

Inside the box
  • Dick Tracy — Tess Disappears (Audition)
  • Little Orphan Annie — LOA 1935-10-18 #0917 (1 of 4) Annie's Big Surprise Birthday Party
  • Ranger Bill — epxxx First Snow
  • Let's Pretend — Why the Sea is Salty
Items

6

Extent

2h 8m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1935 – 1960
Daytime serial drama

The Soap Opera Day

Fifteen minutes at a time, five days a week — the format that invented the modern serial's patience, and named itself after its sponsors.

Inside the box
  • Ma Perkins — Ma P #0423 (1935)
  • The Guiding Light — 791) Talk About Meta
  • Backstage Wife — Backstage Wife 1944-10-20 (xx) Tom Makes Plans to Speak with Philip Farnsworth
  • Stella Dallas — SD The Egyptian Mummy [1]
Items

5

Extent

1h 12m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1937 – 1957
Domestic sitcom, before the word existed

The Comedy of Married Life

Long before the television sitcom had a name, radio had already worked out its shape: a marriage, a misunderstanding, and a laugh track's worth of relatives.

Inside the box
  • Vic and Sade — Vic and Sade 1937-05-28 (xx) Decoration Day Parade
  • The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show — The Burns and Allen Show 1934-09-26 (2) Leaving for America
  • Blondie — B&D 1939-10-30 #018 Dagwood Buys A New Suit
  • My Favorite Husband — MFH 1948-07-05 #000 (Audition) (Cooper) George's Old Flame (aka 1948-10-03 George's Old Flame) (aka Cooper's 10th Wed Anniv)
Items

5

Extent

1h 52m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1940 – 1953
Two voices, one joke

The Comedy Double Act

Some comedy needs exactly two people and no more: a straight man, a fool, and the gap between them where the joke lives.

Inside the box
  • Abbott and Costello — Lion Hunting
  • Burns & Allen — B&A 1936-01-15 #016 Gracie plays Sadie Thompson
  • The Bickerson — Bickersons 1946-09-08 (1) Premiere Show
  • Easy Aces — Easy Aces 37-08-03 (340) How Did Mr. Ace Meet Jane-8th Anniversary
Items

4

Extent

1h 33m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1932 – 1959
Drama with no ending in sight

The Long Serial

Some radio drama wasn't built to resolve — it was built to continue, season after season, for listeners who wanted a family to keep checking in on.

Inside the box
  • One Man's Family — One Man's Family 1941-12-07 B040C10 A New Incident In The Matter Of Irene Franklin
  • Front Page Farrell — Leslie Plans to Resume Working
  • Pepper Young's Family — Unknown Episode
  • Lorenzo Jones — lorenzo jones what is lorenzo up to at night
Items

4

Extent

1h 8m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1938 – 1959
Games, played live

The Quiz and Panel Show

Before the television game show, radio worked out the format: expert panels, home-viewer stunts and a host holding the whole thing together.

Inside the box
  • Information Please — Harry Overstreet Marcus Dufield
  • Dr. I.Q. — Current Name of Peking
  • Truth or Consequences — Dead Air
  • You Bet Your Life — MARX 1944-02-26 Guest - 43' Jack Benny
Items

5

Extent

2h 59m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1937 – 1952
Music, comedy, guests

The Variety Hour

The network variety hour packed a bandleader, a comedian, a singer and a sponsor into thirty minutes, live, every week.

Inside the box
  • Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy — Edgar Bergen 1937-05-09 (1) Guest - Ann Harding & Rodgers & Hart
  • The Big Show — Ep01 Fred Allen, Jimmy Durante
  • Command Performance — Cary Grant, Shirley Temple
  • Charlotte Greenwood — Charlotte Greenwood Train Ride to New York
Items

5

Extent

4h 55m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1935 – 1946
The dance orchestra, broadcast live

Big Bands on the Air

For a decade, a live band remote from a hotel ballroom was standard late-night programming. The music that later filled record shops was first heard here, live and unedited.

Inside the box
  • Glenn Miller on the Air — AFRS 024 - Command Performance - Cary Grant - Judy Garland - Woody Herman 07-28-42
  • Benny Goodman on the Air — AFRS 024 - Command Performance - Cary Grant - Judy Garland - Woody Herman 07-28-42
  • Duke Ellington on the Air — 15 Minutes With Crosby 1931-09-02 (1) First Song - Just One More Chance
  • Make Believe Ballroom — 1945-06-05 WNEW
Items

5

Extent

2h 35m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1943 – 1946
AFRS and the military audience

The Swing Era, Off the Air

The Armed Forces Radio Service built its own parallel music service for troops overseas, free of commercials and, often, of restraint.

Inside the box
  • G.I. Jive — Jill's All Time Juke Box 0101 4xxxxx 1st Song - Caravan (Bunny Berigan)
  • One Night Stand — AFRS-One-Night-Stand-0030-Charlie-Spivak-Hollywood-Palladium-FS-Sunday
  • Downbeat — Downbeat 5, part 1
  • Magic Carpet — Magic Carpet 4xxxxx 0124 Elliot Lawrence AHO, 1st Song - Bell Bottom Trousers {AFRS#124}
Items

4

Extent

1h 44m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1944
June 6, 1944

D-Day, Hour by Hour

Four networks covering the same invasion, in real time, none of them yet sure how it would end. Compare the American, British and Canadian feeds.

Inside the box
  • D-Day: The Complete Broadcast Day — CBD- CBS D-Day0300
  • D-Day: The Complete NBC Broadcast Day — NBC — NBC2330 NewsandMusic
  • D-Day: The Complete Broadcast Day — CBD- CBS D-Day0300
  • CBC Wartime Service — Weather expert explains the Windsor tornado
Items

5

Extent

3h 49m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1938 – 1949
A decade, one year at a time

The Year in Radio News

A yearly digest of the actual news broadcasts, strung together year by year, gives the clearest sense of how fast the decade moved.

Inside the box
  • 1938: The Year in Radio News — Signal at Midnight
  • 1941: The Year in Radio News — The Long Silence
  • 1944: The Year in Radio News — Dead Air
  • 1945: The Year in Radio News — Night Broadcast
Items

5

Extent

2h 55m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1939 – 1944
Propaganda, aimed outward

The Enemy's Own Broadcasts

Axis broadcasters ran their own English-language services throughout the war, aimed squarely at Allied listeners. What they actually sounded like.

Inside the box
  • Broadcasting from the Enemy — The Long Silence
  • Germany Calling — Lord Haw Haw Final Drunken Broadcast
  • Radio Tokyo — Hirohito Announces Japanese Surrender
  • Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft — Adolf Hitler Last Broadcast
Items

5

Extent

1h 32m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1942 – 1945
Wartime information, official

Why We Fight

The US government didn't just report the war — it explained it, in documentary series built by its own information units for troops and citizens alike.

Inside the box
  • Prelude to War — Prelude to War
  • The Battle of Britain — The Battle of Britain
  • Know Your Ally: Britain — Know Your Ally: Britain
  • Words at War — Last Days of Sevastopol
Items

5

Extent

4h 6m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1942 – 1945
The studios enlist

Hollywood's War

Radio brought the film industry's biggest names to the war effort — reading the news, headlining benefit broadcasts, playing themselves for the cause.

Inside the box
  • Command Performance — Robert Taylor, King Sisters, Joan Davis, Nelson Eddy, Lum and Abner
  • Jubilee — Joe Louis Lena Horne
  • Treasury Star Parade — Remember Pearl Harbor
  • Hello Americans — Brazil
Items

5

Extent

2h 38m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1947 – 1950
History, dramatized as news

You Are There

One unusual format treated history as breaking news, with reporters interviewing figures from the past as if the events were unfolding live.

Inside the box
  • You Are There — You Are There ep01 Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
  • Biography in Sound — Sigmond Romburg
  • Cavalcade of America — CALV No Turning Back Sponsored by Bell Telephone
Items

3

Extent

2h 27m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1938 – 1943
Before the films

Orson Welles on the Air

Welles ran a weekly theatre of the air years before Citizen Kane — the same appetite for scale, worked in sound instead of light.

Inside the box
  • The Mercury Theatre on the Air — The Last Train Out
  • The War of the Worlds — The Mercury Theatre on the Air — Dracula
  • The Campbell Playhouse — Ah Wilderness
  • RKO Orson Welles - The Shadow - radio recordings — The Shadow 37-10-24 The Temple Bells of Neban
Items

4

Extent

3h 15m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1936 – 1962
A different play every week

The Anthology Drama

No characters carried over, no sponsor gimmick required — just a new script and cast every week, built to showcase the medium itself.

Inside the box
  • The Columbia Workshop — A Comedy of Danger - The Finger of God
  • Lux Radio Theater — Dulcy
  • Screen Directors Playhouse — Screen Directors Playhouse Stagecoach
  • The CBS Radio Workshop — ep01 Brave New World Part 1
Items

5

Extent

2h 48m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1942 – 1943
The craft hour

Suspense, in Its First Year

Suspense ran for over a decade, but its reputation was set almost immediately. Early episodes from the run that became the genre's benchmark.

Inside the box
  • Suspense — Forecast The Lodger (audition)
  • Suspense — Suspense 044 Banquo's Chair
  • Molle Mystery Theatre — Molle Homicide for Hannah
  • Crime Club — Death Blew out the Match
Items

5

Extent

2h 26m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

1937 – 1954
Horror's radio decades

The Anthology of Fear

American horror radio ran as a genre in its own right for nearly two decades, distinct from suspense's crime plots and closer to pulp fiction.

Inside the box
  • Lights Out — Lights Out 1937-03-10 (40) Chicken Heart
  • Inner Sanctum Mysteries — IS Amazing Death Of Mrs Putnam
  • The Mysterious Traveler — The House of Death
  • The Hall of Fantasy — The Perfect Script
Items

5

Extent

2h 9m

Internet ArchivePublic domain

From listeners

Paths other people made

Anyone can build a journey from their saved episodes, annotate each stop and publish it with a share link.

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